Want to know more about Diablo III's new auction house feature? We've just updated the Diablo III web site with a comprehensive Auction House guide that walks you through the ins and outs of Diablo III's in-game item marketplace, including details on buying and selling, a breakdown of how the real-money auction house works (in regions where available), and more. You'll also find some important information on Battle.net account-security requirements that players interested in using the real-money auction house will need to know about.

The gold-based auction house opens its doors worldwide on May 15 with the launch of Diablo III, and we plan to bring the real-money auction house online approximately one week after that. This is a new service that includes lots of complex elements, so we are going to take a little extra time to ensure the game gets off to a good start before we flip the switch and open the real-money auction house for business.

Want to take on the hordes of the Burning Hells with a friend from halfway around the world? In Diablo® III, you'll be able to play on game servers in regions outside your own, with a few restrictions, using Battle.net®'s new Global Play functionality. Here's how it works....
Diablo III's global game servers are grouped into three distinct game regions:

The Americas - For players in the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.

Europe - For players in the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and Middle Eastern countries such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Asia - For players in South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

In general, players will create characters and play in their "home" region, which is determined by where they live (specifically, the country of residence registered to their Battle.net account). Global Play gives players the ability to switch to any of the other game regions via the in-game options menu, either before or after they log in to the game.

Note that characters, items, and friends lists do not transfer across regions. Playing on a different region's servers means you'll be creating characters and friends lists specifically for that region and you'll be accessing the gold-based auction house for that region.

In addition, players will only have access to the real-money auction house (where applicable) when playing in their "home" game region. That means that, for characters outside of your home region, items cannot be bought or sold in any real-money auction house. The focus of Global Play is simply to give you the ability to play Diablo III together with your friends in any region.

Comments

Well, even though 1 week after release is a disappointment, at least is the same for all of us. I'm really happy about the AH availability and the fees as well. Thank you blizzard.

I am sure they want the servers to get a little bit more stable after the initial wave of the days just after the launch. Because putting up items for auction while the servers are still rather unstable is not a really good idea.

Holy! Yes, yes, yes! I guess I understand what they meant by 10 heroes per region. I totally thought one's copy of D3 will be region locked and you have to pay for another copy in order to get more than 10 characters. This way I can freaking have my 15+ character builds that I have already designed and not pay twice! Not being able to transfer items between all of them is a bit of a bummer but nothing compared to having to buy a new copy and not having the ability to transfer anyway. Yay, for blizzard! As for the people complaining about the RMAH...puh-lease, I thought you people were here because you want to enjoy the game, not make money out of it. You remind me of the KSers from DotA...they play the game for all the wrong reasons as well. And before you pull all that 'holier than thou' jazz, let me mention that I will not be using the AH at all, let alone the RMAH so yes, I am actually unaffected by all this moneygrubbing I'm seeing from people everywhere. Where has the good old gaming for fun gone I wonder.

Never thought I'd see my country's name in a bluepost (Israel) - cool.

I have a friend in Israel who I want to play with, but I'm from America. With Global Play, I realize I will be able to, but I'm not totally clear on how it works. Will my characters be able to play in both regions (only 1 region at a time though), or will I just be able to CREATE characters in each region, and they will each only be able to play in their respective region?

So I'm assuming this doesn't include the 2.9% + .30 cents paypal charges you on every transaction sent to you and that Blizzard won't cover the cost. If it's not, this is the breakdown you could be looking at for frees, at least in the US. Other countries this figure will be even less profit for you.

Sell a gem for $10 bucks.
-Blizzard takes 1.50 of that (8.50 remaining)
-You want to transfer that money to paypal and it costs 1.275 (7.225 remaining)
-Paypal takes their cut of .509 (6.715 remaining).

So, given that you can't directly take money from blizzard > checking account, you are taking back 67% of what you made in this scenario.

Using the Equipment example, you pretty much will be forced to not sell anything below 1.50 bucks, that being the case:

Holy! Yes, yes, yes! I guess I understand what they meant by 10 heroes per region. I totally thought one's copy of D3 will be region locked and you have to pay for another copy in order to get more than 10 characters. This way I can freaking have my 15+ character builds that I have already designed and not pay twice!

Change skills/runes then swap gear. Besides muleing for extra space, or if you just have to have a female and male version of each class, why in the world do you think you have to create more characters? You can have 100+ characters builds and still only need up to 5 characters (1 for each class).

Hmm well for example if I got a 500 or 1000$ item. I feeling to go to a 3rd party website for selling to avoid such fee. I know its safe in the game. But the fee feels high.

Also you have the choise to payout later or it must happen with the auction right away? Then you could switch it back to gold and maybe sell it other way. But still don't wanna promote any 3rd party websites here.

The good part off all of this. I am gonna enjoy the game much more the first week without worrying about the real cash auction house.

Holy! Yes, yes, yes! I guess I understand what they meant by 10 heroes per region. I totally thought one's copy of D3 will be region locked and you have to pay for another copy in order to get more than 10 characters. This way I can freaking have my 15+ character builds that I have already designed and not pay twice! Not being able to transfer items between all of them is a bit of a bummer but nothing compared to having to buy a new copy and not having the ability to transfer anyway. Yay, for blizzard!

You know what would be better? Not having that stupid 10-char limit. When I reach 10 chars (and want to create a new one), I have a really shitty decision to make: delete a character or play with high ping. Yay for blizzard indeed...

Holy! Yes, yes, yes! I guess I understand what they meant by 10 heroes per region. I totally thought one's copy of D3 will be region locked and you have to pay for another copy in order to get more than 10 characters. This way I can freaking have my 15+ character builds that I have already designed and not pay twice!

Change skills/runes then swap gear. Besides muleing for extra space, or if you just have to have a female and male version of each class, why in the world do you think you have to create more characters? You can have 100+ characters builds and still only need up to 5 characters (1 for each class).

Maybe you can tell me where is all that stash space for you to store dozens of builds' worth of equipment.

And by the way, why are there two regions with hundreds of millions of people from dozens of countries, separated by thousands of kms and across multiple time zones (with all the problems that these bring), and one region with one country, one pseudo-quasi-country and two special administrative regions?

Change skills/runes then swap gear. Besides muleing for extra space, or if you just have to have a female and male version of each class, why in the world do you think you have to create more characters? You can have 100+ characters builds and still only need up to 5 characters (1 for each class).

Oh yeah that's totally convenient. Just change up all your skills and traits, swap out all or most of your gear, resocket your items if you're keeping some, re-rune all your skills and change/respec your hireling and you're sorted. A real improvement from D2 singleplayer where I could store as many characters as I wanted as long as I had disc space. Now I would not only have to do all the abovementioned but also write down somewhere which items, runes, traits, hirelings and skills I'm supposed to use for each build that I'm using because there's no chance I'm gonna remember all of it for each build plus for PvP as well. Convenience galore right here. Not to mention of course the fact that what you're saying doesn't give me any replay value at all. There's a freaking universe of difference between playing the game once with a class and then end-game respeccing to see how other builds would work and actually playing the entire game, from level one all the way to level sixty with a whole different build. If you wanna play the game once go right ahead. I'd like to experience what it's like to play a build from start to finish and not respec only when I'm done or midway through or something. Plus more characters means more gold total among your characters which results in more opportunities to skill up artisans, craft, combine gems and socket items, salvage crap for materials etc. Need I continue? Them noobs man...sigh.

You know what would be better? Not having that stupid 10-char limit. When I reach 10 chars (and want to create a new one), I have a really shitty decision to make: delete a character or play with high ping. Yay for blizzard indeed...

Oh don't get me wrong, the whole situation definitely doesn't give me a permanent boner, but at least it's better than what I thought it would be. Sucks either way, just the scope of suckage is different. As for the ping, we'll see how bad it is.

Australia is not in the fucking America's. Are there not enough gamer's in Aus to warrant servers? i find it impossible to beleive that telstra is the only company offering large enough server space.. get your act together ENTIRE GAMING INDUSTRY.

Hmm well for example if I got a 500 or 1000$ item. I feeling to go to a 3rd party website for selling to avoid such fee. I know its safe in the game. But the fee feels high.

Also you have the choise to payout later or it must happen with the auction right away? Then you could switch it back to gold and maybe sell it other way. But still don't wanna promote any 3rd party websites here.

The good part off all of this. I am gonna enjoy the game much more the first week without worrying about the real cash auction house.

According to the FAQ Blizz added a 250$ hard cap for auctions as well.

"In the real-money auction house, the minimum you can list an item for is $1.25 USD (or equivalent local currency). The maximum you can set is $250 USD."

So if you have an item that could sell for 500$ all you can get is 250$. +Ofc you will pay close to 40$ in fees if you sell it for 250$ and wants the funds transferred to your paypal account.

I am not sure how they expect to keep the expensive stuff from being traded on 3-rd party sites with those fees and limitations.

I don't think paypal is taking a cut. It's a deposit into your account. Blizzard is getting that cost; which is why they take 15%. They are profiting off the paypal fees; but oh well.

Off that $2 sale, you'll get 85 cents. If you do a small transfer to your bank from paypal, there will be a fee. But why not let it sit there and earn (miniscule) interest.

Paypal ALWAYS takes a cut, unless the sender (blizzard in this case) specifically says they will cover the transaction fee. I can almost guarantee they wont though. There is of course sending as a gift option, but you can't do that when your running business transactions.

And as far as transferring to your bank; there is no fee if you have a premium (validated / business / whatever) account. It just takes 3-5 days to transfer to your checking/savings. You can have them (paypal) cut a check however, which does cost a fee.

There also is a mass payment option, which you used to be able to exploit and only be charged $1 for the transaction (sending money); but that has been fixed for over a year now.

I have to deal with paypal almost every day, so I know this stuff pretty well.

Paypal ALWAYS takes a cut, unless the sender (blizzard in this case) specifically says they will cover the transaction fee. I can almost guarantee they wont though. There is of course sending as a gift option, but you can't do that when your running business transactions.

Yeah, I'm making a presumption here. I do sell stuff online and use paypal for some of it. I know paypal fees, sadly, very well.

I'm assuming that since blizzard is taking 15%, they are eating the paypal fees. IE they are depositing more money into your account so that if you have "14.89 dollars" in your battle.net account, you'll see "14.89 dollars" in your paypal account. If, for nothing else, to avoid the customer service headache from people who don't understand paypal fees.

Otherwise, there is no reason at all to take a 15% cut.

On the flipside, this 15% covers deposits -into- your battle.net account, right? Cuz if you fund $200 to blizzard via paypal, I'm assuming they aren't putting $195 into your account because of fees.

Paypal ALWAYS takes a cut, unless the sender (blizzard in this case) specifically says they will cover the transaction fee. I can almost guarantee they wont though. There is of course sending as a gift option, but you can't do that when your running business transactions.

Yeah, I'm making a presumption here. I do sell stuff online and use paypal for some of it. I know paypal fees, sadly, very well.

I'm assuming that since blizzard is taking 15%, they are eating the paypal fees. IE they are depositing more money into your account so that if you have "14.89 dollars" in your battle.net account, you'll see "14.89 dollars" in your paypal account. If, for nothing else, to avoid the customer service headache from people who don't understand paypal fees.

Change skills/runes then swap gear. Besides muleing for extra space, or if you just have to have a female and male version of each class, why in the world do you think you have to create more characters? You can have 100+ characters builds and still only need up to 5 characters (1 for each class).

Oh yeah that's totally convenient. Just change up all your skills and traits, swap out all or most of your gear, resocket your items if you're keeping some, re-rune all your skills and change/respec your hireling and you're sorted. A real improvement from D2 singleplayer where I could store as many characters as I wanted as long as I had disc space. Now I would not only have to do all the abovementioned but also write down somewhere which items, runes, traits, hirelings and skills I'm supposed to use for each build that I'm using because there's no chance I'm gonna remember all of it for each build plus for PvP as well. Convenience galore right here. Not to mention of course the fact that what you're saying doesn't give me any replay value at all. There's a freaking universe of difference between playing the game once with a class and then end-game respeccing to see how other builds would work and actually playing the entire game, from level one all the way to level sixty with a whole different build. If you wanna play the game once go right ahead. I'd like to experience what it's like to play a build from start to finish and not respec only when I'm done or midway through or something. Plus more characters means more gold total among your characters which results in more opportunities to skill up artisans, craft, combine gems and socket items, salvage crap for materials etc. Need I continue? Them noobs man...sigh.

do you honestly think they're aren't capable of having hundreds or thousands of bnet accounts with Americas addresses? not to mention the gross number of unreported compromised accounts

You do realize that your bnet location synchronizes when you log in right? Good luck proving to them you are a US citizen. You don't think they are smart enough to realize thousands of people with American addresses have IP addresses from China? So to answer your question, no, they are not capable.

If you want to get cash for your items, be sure to not list the item under your Battle.net balance account:

"any proceeds from the sale of items in the real-money auction house that have been sent to the player’s Battle.net Balance will not be transferrable to the third-party payment service account."

It looks like premium items will be up on the gold AH:

"In the gold-based auction house, the minimum you can list an item for is 100 gold, and the maximum is 100,000,000,000 gold.
In the real-money auction house, the minimum you can list an item for is $1.25 USD (or equivalent local currency). The maximum you can set is $250 USD."